iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

So! You're composing a reply and notice you are talking like the most condescending encyclopedia ever Ah yes, you're angry, and you will crush this ignoramus with facts & expertise But consider: in this mode, you are at your worst, your least thoughtful & observant. Also: trivial to manipulate

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I'm suddenly struck with how defeatist the "sandbox" metaphor is, for software security I mean, have you ever set a toddler loose in a sandbox? let alone a 6 year old

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e.w. niedermeyer @niedermeyer.online · 21/09/2026

the question "can computers drive?" is vastly superior to "can computers think?" because it disarms all the dorm room bullshit and reduces the question to its pragmatic implications, while also revealing that the underlying problem is one of vocabulary rather than anything metaphysical

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

For a useful comparison: we sell some LLM-powered features/products (among everything else Grafana does). Our customers would drop us *instantly* (or sue for contract breach) if we ran agent harnesses with access like this. We disclose any 3rd party service that their data might touch

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Claude shared my Friday morning update about what's been going on in Slack and then... went poetic? Possibly about my imminent irrelevance? Or maybe just about the weekend approaching, hard to say really

Calendar and email were out of scope as instructed, so the terrain reads backlog age and weight rather than the clock: the ridge on the left is Wednesday evening, flattening to still water on the right where nothing new is waiting.

Icons for copy, audio, thumbs up, thumbs down

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

This is a useful point, but mostly because there's no magic in any of these abstract words — think, feel, hope — nor in other abstract things we link to humans, like rights & responsibilities. We map the words & reasoning to a reality that is impossibly complex. They're useful tools, not reality.

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

All of the AI doomerism seems to involve AI agents running on very expensive infra we use to automate stuff to control / damage other expensive infra we use to automate other stuff I keep noticing that both risks are easily controlled if we just choose what to automate (and pay some more salaries)

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European Commission @ec.europa.eu · 16/09/2026

"We want to bring the relationship with Canada to the highest level possible. Dear Mark J. Carney, I would like to work with you on opening the door for Canada to be the first associate member of the EU." — President @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu at #SOTEU 2026

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Rachel Coldicutt @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

One of the things the guys (always guys) hyper-rationalising on behalf of data centres seem to not understand is that these physical bits of infrastructure are also doing a lot of metaphorical heavy lifting for people who are ambivalent about and/or have low trust in tech

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

TBD if Uber is able to successfully appeal the decision, but this *looks* like a great example of regulation doing some good. $1b is not a "slap on the wrist, cost of doing business" kind of fine.

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Some people want other vehicles, mostly big ones? But I'm never going to buy anything that's not a hatchback. I can load the kids or a washing machine in the back, I have roof racks for bikes etc and I can pull a u-turn in the street, then parallel park in that spot the SUVs have to drive past

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

100% Even worse is that the mental load is quite high to take a lot of LLM text and "fix it" (correct the voice, tune the reader experience, etc) — it feels like trying to design an armchair, and working with a "first try" that's fully assembled, glued, upholstered, varnished, but mostly wrong.

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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

The job of management boils down to deciding where to invest company resources to maximize returns. But managers don't want to do their jobs. So instead they started agitating for "velocity" in a foolish belief that they would never have to prioritize one idea over another ever again.

productpicnic.beehiiv.com

No amount of velocity can shield your team from opportunity cost

AKA "LLMs can't fix your shitty internal culture"

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

So nervous for my first day in a new job, working in First Class(!) in the new bullet train (!!) I think I'll head out with the drinks cart before we even leave the station, really make this an unforgettable trip for my first customers

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

If you have Chrome, Firefox, or Edge, WebAIM's WAVE extensions can help review sites directly within the browser. Automated tests can't catch everything, but WAVE can still find many barriers and Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) errors. wave.webaim.org/extension/

wave.webaim.org

WAVE Chrome, Firefox, and Edge Extensions

The WAVE Chrome, Firefox, and Edge extensions allows you to evaluate web content for accessibility issues directly within your browser. Because the extension runs entirely within your web browser, no…

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Totally curiosity-sniped myself yesterday at a train station There was a loop of rubber tubing hanging about 3m off the ground, dangling from a looong cord; what could that be for? I had time for half a thought theorising then walked straight into a cast iron bench 😭

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

It's funny ("funny") to look from the POV of the companies making these apps. Everyone who nopes out entirely, doesn't install the app, buys their lunch some other way: invisible. Frustration & anger: invisible. Devs work on what's easily measured, esp what changes result in higher revenue.

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

There's a whole class of videos showing someone's mother or grandmother cooking with practiced ease and flipping hot food with bare fingers. How are their hands so tough? The secret is (as usual) that reality is complex, but we think only in shortcuts. (I love figuring out puzzles like this!)

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

I haven't bought McD or similar in decades; but last week my kids played in a late concert and were v thirsty at near midnight with a 45-min drive home; the McD drive-thru was the only option. We then lost 25 minutes failing to get anything at all before driving home.

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Reading Psychology of Software Teams from @grimalkina.bsky.social at the moment diving into what happens to teams AFTER they commit, do whatever it takes, and ship that project to great acclaim and am reminded how "it's not a sprint; it's a marathon!" sounded wise, once No, these are our lives

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

The cool thing about playing guitar (and other instruments) is that no, your fingers (& brain) literally can't do what you want but you keep urging them to, and they slowly change, until you have different fingers and a different brain that can

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

+1 this Also — "if you hit a bug or missing feature, just raise a PR" falls over from lacking coding skills, sure but ALSO that's a terrible way to make a good UX. Imagine a new PM pushing for a feature. They know it's good b/c... a single user who hasn't used the product successfully spec'd it

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

I tried paddleboarding for the first time at an offsite — where I flew to a different country to see people I work with and it felt like a good metaphor to share here? With strangers I could also post a photo, like how I could walk up to random people at the store and show them This life is weird

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Why do I see so many reactions to "big words = ableism", but zero of the posts they're reacting to? All the responses are the same, too ("look it up!") and none them seem aware of actual accessibility issues & ableism. It matters what the writing is; are we talking literary fiction or govt forms?

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

I watched the first half of the world cup match last night, in seats pulled out into the street outside a bar in Paris I don't know why, but the FIFA logo got shown a LOT, and every single time I'd parse it first as FAFO

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

I gave a sponsor keynote launching the RAISE Summit Hackathon in Paris this morning! Made slides late last night, it wasn't clear I'd be able to use them; no rehearsal. Somehow it all went off quite smoothly, and I was a lot more comfortable on stage than sitting in the audience 5 minutes before.

Me gesturing & talking into a mic in front of a big screen showing a slide. The backs of a few audience members' heads. They are keenly interested and probably nodding along. Maybe.

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

Listen, I *used* to tell dad jokes on occasion, but I stopped completely a few years ago when he passed away ...we had a tough relationship, but some work on all sides did pay off; and his delight in sharing a good (or terrible) joke was never in doubt

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Devops & AI-powered teams: this gets tricky. We moved away from the usual Grafana model of stable teams of 8+ engineers supporting any large project (and able to cover on-call for what they ship directly) to ... often 2-4 engineers in a workgroup building a project, with much more flexible groups.

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

I never see anyone else bragging about this but in the past 2 years, I've had *five* engineers in my team take multiple months off, either as new parents, or for their 5-year sabbatical all on the most fast-moving & innovating engineering team in the company. These things are not disconnected.

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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 04/06/2026

it remains true: to get better at doing something, you have to do it a lot, preferably in a row, and see how it turns out writing. playing music. teaching. sports. doing dishes. grant proposals. any human skill you care to name

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

I admit I would like to see a bit more variety in the "gotcha" questions people use to show gaps in AI abilities I mean, I have never once in my life asked any program of any kind how many [letter] are in [word] — can we mix in some more useful-feeling gotchas?

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

"[Chart type] of [type of data] that shows [reason for including chart]" is a start but alt text that leaves out any *conclusion* you can draw from the chart is still common. "A line graph showing EV, hybrid & ICE car sales over time to show large recent shifts" includes a reason.. but is useless

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USDA Choice Thinkmeat @arrdem.tirefireind.us · 17/05/2026

So here's my thesis re: "AI" at this point. 1. Not a "strong" AI 2. Not a "soft" AI 3. Questionably general 4. Still a useful tool and one that's going to permanently change the technology landscape

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

I'm not a philosopher but it does seem obvious that ethics apply to actions people take; we are the responsible actors. AI ethics would just be "are people deploying / using AI in ways that are morally good or not," and it's up to us to evaluate outcomes & regulate as needed.

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

slightly increase a band 23cmИ

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

It's curious — I know enough of how LLMs work, there's no consciousness that'd be upset if I experimented to see what kinds of abuse would be rejected vs tolerated by different models but I just don't want to. It'd feel repugnant. Alarm bells going off.

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Nimo 🏳️‍🌈 @nimobeeren.com · 09/05/2026

Yeah, this just changed my view. Starting from scratch risks building the wrong thing, whereas other companies can be a good proxy for what you want to do. simonwillison.net/2026/May/6/v...

On the threat to SaaS providers of companies rolling their own solutions instead:

I just realized it’s the thing I said earlier about how I only want to use your side project if you’ve used it for a few weeks. The enterprise version of that is I don’t want a CRM unless at least two other giant enterprises have successfully used that CRM for six months. [...] You want solutions that are proven to work before you take a risk on them.

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

There's an amazing communication hack where you share your interpretation & next actions, so the other person can see where you're headed and maybe help course-correct ... this was around before Claude, I swear it

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Trying to identify the helpful animal in this graphic? Here's a little rule of thumb to help you figure it out: Q: How do I distinguish a stoat from a weasel? A: A weasel is weasily wecognised and a stoat is stoatally different credit: Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust

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Simon Willison @simonwillison.net · 05/05/2026

AI-run business experiments are interesting and fun up to the point where they waste the time of humans who haven't opted into the experiments - I think they need to keep their own human operators in the loop for outbound actions that affect other people simonwillison.net/2026/May/5/o...

simonwillison.net

Our AI started a cafe in Stockholm

Andon Labs previously started an AI-run retail store in San Francisco. Now they're running a similar experiment in Stockholm, Sweden only this time it's a cafe. These experiments are interesting, …

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

With AI, we can now create tech debt at unprecedented speeds ✨ Super curious if we can get *out* of it again, also at unprecedented speeds. For a start, if you have a working product you're WAY ahead of people building "good architecture" for a product they're still inventing with zero users.

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

I've been using Android TalkBack for a while as a way to 1. Read articles, stories etc without needing my eyes on a screen 2. Remind myself how terrible accessibility is, despite the fact that we figured out this tech decades ago TalkBack does slowly improve; but overall experience gets worse

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Trying to figure out why I'm utterly uninterested in this but others are I've never wanted a dustpan or paint rollsr tray that held a large bucket worth of dust / paint, for one — too heavy, disaster if it spills, more paint than I'd ever paint in one session (and if I have that much dust: ouch)

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

We are apparently inventing a way to generate media that just remixes what you already recognize & how you already think. No need to encounter other lives, mindsets, cultures, even other characters; no risk of accidentally enriching your perspective; just eating your own output, over & over, great

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Patricia Aas 🐢🏳️‍🌈 @patigallardo.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

First principle of data privacy is: what you don’t have, can’t be stolen from you, and no one can compel you to hand it over.

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Arvind Venkataramani @avenk.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

I'll need to write this down as a blog post, thanks for the prod. off the top of my head: - moving away from a task flow as the dominant paradigm - reducing noise in the flow - constructing delegation differently - much more recoverability - many more layers of abstraction on change/work history

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

In an interesting thread about vigilance exhaustion errors, and why Claude Code UX feels like it could be much better -- my reply here was super-compressed and not worth going into depth in thread, so I'm pulling some of it out to my own. Firstly, Anthropic has pressures that most of us don't:

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

Recurrent pattern of emails wanting to sell me new AI-powered services that'll help my team with a bunch of things we already built our own tools to do ...they aren't lost causes, though, imo; I think *most* teams do not want to rebuild their processes from first principals, over & over

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Rob Whelan 🌱 @robw.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Cynicism: needle but no thread May have a sharp point, not much use

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